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Tracy Kidder has died

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Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#41

Post by davis »

nzzn wrote: post #21

It is not at all surprising that “The Soul of a New Machine” resonates with people in Hacker News. And it is a tremendous book. But for me, his book about Paul Farmer, “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, was even more meaningful. Tracy met Paul by happenstance and in a short encounter recognized the stubborn greatness that was Paul. He was an amazing character who sadly is no longer with us, but captured in a book worthy o…

Agreed. The Soul of a New Machine is my personal favorite but I think Mountains Beyond Mountains as well as Strength in What Remains are the more powerful and interesting books.

Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#42

Post by neilv »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #33

I read the book when it first came out. In 1986 I took a job at a new company and Carl Alsing, who was the manager of the microkids (and had written every bit of microcode for machines that came before that) was in the office next to my cube. In fact, he was one of the people who interviewed me for the job. So I reread the book and my esteem for Kidder's writing went up even more. In the parts of the book where he de…

I think my only crossing of paths with someone from Data General was actually only a few years ago. A startup was building cutting-edge phototonic computing tech for AI, and one of the key people for the electronic hardware side was a graybeard from DG. Nice mild-mannered guy, and very capable and sensible. I recall a major tapeout working the first time.

(They also had an engineering executive who had been a computer engineer from a major CPU company. In one engineering reporting meeting, when a team mentioned they needed to do something with a particular facility of the off-the-shelf CPU, the executive volunteered that he could help with that, since he designed it. Everyone laughed.)

Hardware companies are a mixed blessing for us software people, but I wonder whether hardware engineers are more likely to keep it real (old-school high-powered engineer style) than software people?

Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#43

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

I both read the Soul of a New Machine book and used the Data General MV8000 hardware depicted there - a purchase of DEC VAX machines was being considered, but meanwhile an MV8000 and a bunch of blue and white terminals snuck in ...

The hardware was pretty solid, although I'm not sure anyone got around to doing custom microcode that was a selling point. The operating system (AOS/VS, was it?) was OK, but had some edge cases - I remember the filesystem had ACLs (access control lists), but you could create files owned by non-existent users (promptly used for a prank).

Thanks for the tale, it made a dent.

Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#44

Post by randlet »

nzzn wrote: post #21

It is not at all surprising that “The Soul of a New Machine” resonates with people in Hacker News. And it is a tremendous book. But for me, his book about Paul Farmer, “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, was even more meaningful. Tracy met Paul by happenstance and in a short encounter recognized the stubborn greatness that was Paul. He was an amazing character who sadly is no longer with us, but captured in a book worthy o…

House was also a wonderful read. In many ways I enjoyed it more than SoaNM due to the parallels with software development but in a completely different domain. Building a house is remarkably similar to building an application.

His whole catalogue is fantastic really. Definitely a favourite author of mine.

Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#45

Post by chiph »

I love the book. We had an Eclipse MV/8000 at college. And abused the hell out of it - when one of my classmates compiled their ADA programs we knew to take a coffee break.

But I can't help but think that the book helped normalize death-marches in the industry. I'm still recommending it to colleagues, but with the caveat that we are not in a "do or die" situation, so go home and get some good sleep.

Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#47

Post by aanet »

_doctor_love wrote: post #35
aanet wrote: post #13

_The Soul of a New Machine_ was one of the first (among many!) tech history books I read as a precocious teen, when I hadn't even seen a VAX (or a miniframe), let alone programmed one. But the book brought alive the machine right in front of my eyes. This was years ago, when the only thing I programmed was a piddly DOS system with BASIC. His one quote [1] remained in my imagination, and inspired me to learn managemen…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law Applies both to software as well as hardware.

Oh, absolutely.

Software products (which is where I spent most of my career) absolutely reflects the org that built it...

It had almost become my hobby to do a reverse-mapping of sorts and understand an org that built some software - and with it, all the org's dysfunctions would become obvious, based largely on how the various modules communicate with each other.

Have seen that in numerous autonomous vehicle stacks (among other SW) I've worked with :-/

Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#48

Post by ttkari »

Me and a couple of friends read “The Soul of a New Machine” in our teens and it was a very influential book for us. In the late 90's I found a brand new hardcover copy of the local translation in a discount bookstore and bought it with the intention of giving it as a present to one of those friends sometime later in life.

I ended up keeping the book for ~25 years and only at the time of his 50th birthday a few years ago I reckoned we're old enough now. I read the book once more and shipped it to him, literally halfway across the world. Great memories. Thank you for your work, Mr. Kidder.

Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#49

Post by ghc »

Something many may not know is that beyond his own novels, Tracy was also deeply involved in Jonathan Harr's book, "A Civil Action." He and Harr were friends, and he told Harr about the courtroom case. Later, when Harr would get stuck, he worked with Harr to edit and give feedback on his drafts.

Re: Tracy Kidder has died

#50

Post by bcantrill »

mindcrime wrote: post #17

Soul of a New Machine was one of the first books that got me interested in the tech industry, computers, etc. Reading it as a teen probably contributed substantially to the direction of my career up to the present day. RIP Mr. Kidder. Black bar?

I would second the black bar for Kidder -- The Soul of a New Machine constitutes the literary foundation of our craft: it is our Odyssey. Speaking personally, I have spoken and written about Soul many times ([0][1][2]) -- and I know that its impact from me is far from unique.

RIP Tracy Kidder -- and thank you for giving us all permission to feel passion for the machine.

[0] https://speakerdeck.com/bcantrill/oral-tradition-in-software...

[1] https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2019/02/10/reflecting-on-the-so...

[2] https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2019/12/02/the-soul-of-a-new-co...

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